Ownership of Estate Whim Plantation
St. Croix Virgin Islands

from "Preserving the Legacy"

© Priscilla Watkins on behalf of St. Croix Landmarks Society

There is still much to discover about the personal lives of the people who lived and worked at Whim Plantation from 1743 until the government purchase in 1932. Research has been undertaken and various papers and at least one book have been written, primarily about the owners. Historians George Tyson and Svend Holsoe are among the few actively seeking information specifically about Whim. The stories of the workers and their relationships are still in research at this time. For the latest information about these people and their times contact the St. Croix Landmarks Society for current publications in this field. The record of owners as we know it now, follows:
 

1743: the first recorded owner was William Payne, probably Irish. The census shows he had seven slaves on the property, whose names were not recorded. Payne set up a small village of 6 houses and probably harvested the trees for sale off island.
 

1747: sold to John Francis who kept slaves and planted cotton and lived there until 1750. He was probably an Irish immigrant with limited funds.
 

1754: sold to John James Barry, Irish. He and his wife stayed in their home in Christiansted, the estate was converted from cotton to sugar cane cultivation but Barry died before completing payment for the estate and it reverted back to Markoe.
 

1793: Crucian-born 33 year old Christopher (Scots-French) was an experienced planter and soon made Whim a success again. Despite his inheritance, it was a very tragic time in his life. The previous year his wife Anna had died, soon followed by the death of both of his little children, Edward and Catherine. A few months later he received word that his father had died in London, leaving him as head of the family. Christopher settled his father's Will and turned the operations of the shipping line and the European ventures to his next oldest brother, then returned to St. Croix and sold off his father's properties. He bought #4 and personally undertook a major restoration of the property. McEvoy built the showcase greathouse we see today, on the ruins of the hurricane-ravaged house. The design is similar to French chateaux in the champagne area near the Swiss border, home of his mother's ancestors. While Christopher was being educated and trained in Europe as a young man it is likely he went to see his those estates near Montbeliard, France and, on his father's side, in Fife, Scotland. He made many other major improvements at Whim. The slave houses were moved to the west of the greathouse and made of stone. All of the roofs were shingled. He doubled the capacity of the sugar factory, doubled the number of slaves, and added a new still and a manager's house. Following the French fashion of frequent bathing, he had a bathhouse built about 20 feet from the bedroom on the west end.

McEvoy was not able to enjoy his retreat for long. His brother Michael died in 1803, the same year the estate was named "Whim" and Christopher was forced to travel more and more as he resumed responsibility for the family businesses and homes in London and Copenhagen. In 1809 he agreed to trade his property for one closer to his brother's estate at Baron Spot.
 

The Hartman family of Lime Tree had been in the Caribbean for at least 3 generations by 1809. Their fortunes had flourished and the large family spared no effort to keep themselves in lavish comfort. Isaac Hartman, Sr. was an absentee owner, living in London who began borrowing on Whim as soon as he got control of it. But St. Croi~ reached it peak sugar cane production soon after, as competing plantations were being opened up in Cuba, Brazil, the southern states of the USA and even in Asia. Then beet sugar was discovered, a final blow. The elder Hartman died in 1814, owing about 10,000 pounds sterling, mostly to his son-in-law in St. Croix. The youngest Hartman, Stedman, aged 30, was managing the estate; he lived with his family at nearby Orange Grove. Three years later a fever epidemic cause the loss of many lives and hard times began. The Hartmans lost one estate because of debt and had to sell Orange Grove; the entire family moved into the Greathouse at Whim. Stedman had three babies under the age of five to worry about when a hurricane in 1819 left many injured, homeless or dead all over the island. The storm flattened Whim and the Hartman fortunes went down with it. Between 1820 and 1839 , the title to Whim was in the hands of creditors although Stedman Hartman managed the property most of those years.
 

1839: sold to Thomas Griffith. Griffith lived just across the King's Highway on his brother's estate, Two Williams, until June of 1847, when he and his wife, Mary Anne, both immigrants from Ireland, moved to Whim with their two children, Helen 8, and Thomas 5. Griffith was a brutal master according to police records; most if not all of his slaves had reason to fear, and probably hate, him. It is likely he was as cruel to those under his care at Two Williams as well.

Before he became violently ill on the 28th of February, 1848, his wife had suddenly decided to go by carriage to spend some time with her sister in Christiansted (a jolting and dusty 18 miles trip, she was six months pregnant). Griffith dosed himself and got worse. He ordered his slave, Albert Simmonds, to go bring his wife back, and get a doctor. By midweek he had two doctors and more doses, but worsened and died on the 4th of March, in the evening, a Saturday. The doctors declared he had been poisoned and arrested Albert Simmonds, one of many who might wish him dead. His wife was never officially suspected. Without evidence the Governor ordered Simmonds released. The case remained unsolved until nearly 150 years later in a lecture at Whim two doctors said Griffith indeed had been poisoned. He had died from the dosages of his doctors and self administered purges, which contained enough mercury to kill him four times again. On the 4th of May Mary Anne's son Charles was born.

The emancipation rebellion begun in the evening of July 2nd in 1848 must have been known to Whim's workers. Surely most if not all of them went to the uprising in Frederiksted on the 3rd of July. Fear sent Mary Ann fleeing with her children to the safety of ships in the harbor. For nearly 24 hours the rebellion was bloodless. That .evening however, the uprising turned violent when the militia at Christiansted fired upon and killed two men and a woman. Whim was among the many plantations that were looted over three days.
 

1870: sold to 2 Latimer brothers, whose family held onto the estate for the next 62 years. Originally from Ireland, the younger brother, James 31, a bachelor, moved into the greathouse and his spinster sister Mary Ann arrived to keep house for him. They had to flee when Whim was torched in the Fireburn workers revolt of October 1, 1878. Whim was among the ten hardest hit plantations of the 50 trashed in the rioting. All the crops were destroyed.

Mary Ann inherited Whim in 1888 and with the help of her nephew James Smith, ran it until her death in July of 1927. The estate had been converted to a cattle ranch in 1924. Smith was considered an odd man, anti-social. When the federal government made an offer to buy the plantation for a homestead plan, Smith and his Canadian wife Anna Jane, accepted $20,000 in exchange for the estate which now included Campo Rico, Good Hope and Ruan's Bay, 1,416 acres.